CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER
Nash said, “What else, if anything, do you know about the prison?”
“It was built maybe twenty years ago by the old regime. Then, about ten years ago, it was sold to a private company.”
“Do you know to who?” asked Temple from the back seat.
“No. But whoever it is must be very rich. Prisons, even here, do not come cheap.”
“You said your cousin used to work there. What sorts of prisoners are kept at the place?” asked Nash.
“I can tell you that when the prison was sold, all the prisoners there at that time were sent to other places within Myanmar.”
“But why buy a prison with no prisoners?” said Nash. “As a private company you make your money by charging per prisoner, don’t you?”
“Oh, they have prisoners now. But where they come from?” Thura shook his head.
“Nobody knows. They’re not from Burma. It is wild, man.
My cousin told me that while he was there after it was sold, private jets came and private jets went.
And on those jets prisoners come and prisoners stay, and the jets go back to where they came from. ”
“Private jets?” said Nash.
“There’s an airstrip nearby. It is only for those who have permission. You do not have permission, man, they shoot your ass out the sky. Boom! My cousin finally quit last year because he said it was too stressful.”
“He must have seen the prisoners?”
“Yeah, but he was told to never talk about it. They were serious about that, real serious.”
“I suppose whoever owns the prison wants to keep all that a secret?” said Nash.
“Oh yeah. He can do what he wants, I guess. It is his place.”
“You know it to be a man?” said Nash sharply.
“No. I never tried to find out. It would not be good for me.”
“And yet here you are helping us,” said Temple.
“You promised to get me out of here if I did,” said Thura, eyeing him in the mirror. “And you had better keep your promise. . .If we make it out. If we don’t, no worries, right? Because the dead have no worries.” He grinned.
Two hours later they parked off the road and behind some large bushes after killing the lights.
Adjacent to the bushes ran a field of grass nearly six feet high.
Using a pair of night binoculars he had brought with him from Hong Kong, Nash got out of the Jeep and watched from behind some of the bushes.
The SUV they’d been following had pulled off the road but on the other side.
Twenty minutes later Nash sank down as another vehicle passed by and stopped parallel with the SUV.
Four men got out of the second vehicle, and the two men from the SUV joined them.
There was a brief discussion, and Nash watched as one of the four men opened the back of their vehicle and drew out some substantial firepower.
He passed out these weapons to the other men.
Nash looked at his watch. It wouldn’t be long now, he thought.
A minute later the men climbed back into their vehicles.
They pulled well off the road and hid them behind thick underbrush and high grasses across the road from Nash.
He continued to watch as two men from the second vehicle reappeared and placed something dark and flat in the roadway.
He then hurried back to the Jeep and told the others about what he’d seen, including all the weaponry they’d be up against.
“Okay, Thura, an ambulance coming from the prison is going to appear along this road on its way to the hospital. There are six men up there who are going to stop it. There will be a woman in the ambulance. The guards will be subdued and the woman will be freed. The men believe they will be taking her to another location in a planned chain of stops prior to getting out of this country.”
“But you will not allow this?” said Thura.
Nash said, “We will allow it, up to a certain point. What the men there don’t know is that we’re going to take the woman and get her out of here. And they’re going to be left behind.”
“But how will we get her out of here?” asked Thura nervously.
“You can leave that to us. But you’ll be coming along for the ride,” added Nash.
“You said those men have heavy firepower,” Thura pointed out. “And there are six of them.”
“Seven, counting one prison guard who’s on their side and will no doubt be in the ambulance.”
“Okay, seven. I only have a knife and you have two pistols. Not a fair fight.”
“We’ll have to level the playing field then,” said Nash as he pulled out his guns and checked their loads, making sure each was racked with a round.
“How?” asked Thura.
“By putting our finger on the scales when it’s best for us,” replied Nash.
“But how will you do this?” Thura wanted to know.
“You’ll have a ringside seat. But when we leave, you need to drive like a bat out of hell.”
Thura smiled. “I do not know what that means, but it sounds like something I would like to do.”